Wednesday, 19 January 2011

A Reuters report on Tunisia and the absence of the Islamists from the popular revolt that ousted Bin Ali's regime (I'm quoted in this report):

Arab leaders play up threat from religious radicals

* But Islamists take back seat as Tunisia charts future

* Governments unlikely to relax tough security - analysts

By Tom Pfeiffer

CAIRO, Jan 19 (Reuters) - The absence of Islamist slogans from Tunisia's pro-democracy revolt punches a hole in the argument of many Arab autocrats that they are the bulwark stopping religious radicals sweeping to power.

Ousted strongman Zine el Abidine Ben Ali spent much of his 23-year rule crushing Islamist opposition groups who opposed his government's brand of strict secularism: after Sept. 11 2001, he was an enthusiastic backer of Washington's "war on terror".

But the evidence of the past week is that the protest slogans that rang out before his fall demanded not an imposition of Islamic sharia law but fair elections and free speech.

"The lesson from what's happening in Tunisia is that (Arab leaders) won't be able to hide any more behind the Islamist threat argument," said Amel Boubekeur, a North Africa specialist at social sciences school EHESS in Paris.

It remains to be seen whether Tunisia's enfeebled Islamists will be able to win significant support in the event that they are unbanned and allowed to contest planned free elections.

But so far most complaints levelled at a new interim government set up after Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia have focused not on a lack of Islamists but on too many faces from the old regime.

Islamists were "not able to carry the concerns and longings of the vast majority of Tunisian people, especially the middle class which has chosen freedom and justice," said Egyptian political analyst Nabil Adbel Fatah.

It looks embarrassing for the Western governments that spent decades justifying their support for Ben Ali -- and other secular-minded Arab world strongmen -- by suggesting the alternative was Iran-style Islamic revolution.

From Syria to Egypt and Algeria, governments have used the Islamist peril to justify draconian security policies and emergency laws that gnawed at civil liberties and allowed broad powers of search, arrest and imprisonment without trial.

Civil liberties campaigners have long said the Islamist threat is a thin pretext to destroy not just the Islamists but all challenges to the grip of ruling elites.

"We've seen this in Egypt, where the regime makes it impossible for secular political opposition forces to get anywhere in order to tell the West it's the Islamists or us," said North Africa expert Hugh Roberts.

Analysts said Arab rulers might respond by backtracking on anti-Islamist rhetoric and warning instead of the danger of social chaos caused by high unemployment.

TUNISIA ISLAMISTS DIVIDED, WEAK

Political Islam does seem uniquely weak in Tunisia -- a relatively wealthy country with a strong education system and deep ties to secular France -- compared to its Arab neighbours.

Leaders of Tunisia's moderate Islamist Ennahda (Renaissance) movement have said they want to cooperate with the interim government, not overthrow the country's secular institutions.

Tunisian authorities outlawed Ennahda in the early 1990s, after accusing it of a violent plot to overthrow secular rule. Hundreds of Ennahda supporters were put on trial in Tunisia in the 1990s while others fled to Europe.

The movement, whose exiled leader Rached Ghannouchi has said he plans to return, denies it seeks violence. Its thinking is seen by some analysts as in tune with the moderate Islamist-rooted AK party that came to power in Turkey in 2002.

In a bid to expoit Tunisia's unrest, the Algerian-based Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb called on Tunisian youth to join its fighters for training in Algeria.

But analysts say the group has negligible support, even in Algeria. Al Qaeda analyst Camille Tawil said that while small numbers of angry young Tunisians might eventually be tempted, it was clear demonstrators were ordinary people protesting against despotism and the al Qaeda appeal would have no impact.

Across the region, Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have bolstered the message propagated by religious radicals that the West is waging a war on Muslims.

In reaction, Arab societies have become more outwardly pious, with more women wearing veils, more men wearing beards and more people attending mosques.

Even in Tunisia, mosques became spaces for political protest and some young Tunisians adopted a language of revolt that took a cue from Salafist groups and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

"There has been growth in Tunisia of what could be called manifestations of popular piety," said Michael Willis of Oxford University. "But many Tunisians see that as a protest against the regime, as Ben Ali spoke against headscarves."

"The Islamist opposition is not what it was 20 years ago," said Boubekeur. "Many young people don't even know who Rached Ghannouchi is."

Elsewhere in the Arab world, moderate Islamists have become part of the political landscape, all touting the values of freedom and democracy, at least in public.

"We hope (Tunisia's) popular intifada will be crowned by a pluralistic democratic regime that guarantees everyone their rights," Sheikh Hamsour Mansour, head of Jordan's Islamic Action Front, told Reuters.

Commenting on Tunisia, Morocco's Justice and Development Party (PJD) said "achieving stability and prosperity is tied to respecting the democratic option and the people's will".

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood welcomed the overthrow of an autocrat in Tunisia and said many Tunisian problems were also true of Egypt.

The group, which is the country's biggest opposition force and could rally thousands of supporters according to some analysts, refuses to confront the state on the streets. (Additional reporting by Sarah Mikhail in Cairo, Zakia Abdennebi in Rabat and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by William Maclean)

Monday, 17 January 2011

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The near-silence of Arab leaders about the popular protests that chased Tunisia's ex-President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali from power speaks volumes.
People across the region have watched enthralled as street unrest forced Ben Ali to flee the North African country he has ruled for 23 years -- an unprecedented spectacle in the Arab world, where authoritarian leaders can usually only be dislodged by army coup, assassination or their own mortality.
U.S. President Barack Obama urged free and fair elections in Tunisia, a call echoed by other Western leaders -- many of whom had turned a blind eye to Ben Ali's repressive style.
But Arab capitals have largely kept quiet, apparently stunned by the seismic explosion of protest in Tunisia.
"What will worry many governments in the region is that the crisis was spontaneous and not organized," said Henry Wilkinson of the Janusian Security Consultancy. "Events in Tunisia have shown the risk of a pressure cooker effect: if you have a system of intense suppression without addressing the causes of discontent, a crack in that system can lead to an explosion."
A cautious statement from the Cairo-based Arab League called for Tunisia's "political forces, representatives of Tunisian society and officials to stand together" and keep the peace.
Saudi Arabia, a monarchy that gave Ben Ali refuge, expressed support for Tunisians as they overcome this "difficult stage."
In Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak has ruled for almost 30 years, the foreign ministry said it respected the choices of the Tunisian people and trusted their wisdom "in fixing the situation and avoiding the collapse of Tunisia into chaos."
Sudan said it welcomed the political change in Tunisia, using similar language about respecting the will of Tunisians.
The military overthrow of Sudan's president Jaafar Nimeiri in 1985 after a wave of popular protests is perhaps the closest parallel in modern Arab history to Ben Ali's ouster. Sudan's current president, Omar al-Bashir, took power in a 1989 coup.
In Iraq, where a coup backed by violent unrest toppled the Hashemite monarchy in 1958, the government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, sidestepped comment on the upheaval in Tunisia.
"This is an internal issue for Tunisian people. We do not interfere in the affairs of other countries and respect the choice of the people in the region," he said.
Iraq can boast a government that was formed, albeit with huge difficulty, after a genuine election, unlike those in most Arab countries, which offer more form than substance.
PEOPLE POWER
The reticence of Arab leaders over Tunisia may reflect their fears that, as North Africa analyst Camille Tawil argues, "what happened in Tunis proved that the people can topple a government in the Arab world by taking to the streets and demonstrating."
But it does not necessarily mean they will stand by if their own people are inspired to replicate Tunisia's revolt.
"Other autocrats will not have the squeamishness about suppression with violence that the Tunisians showed," said Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Libya and Iran.
He said some, such as Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, "will conclude that they are still right to never give an inch, whether to Islamists or just reformers" and that regime survival is best served by resisting any Western pressure for change.
Arab rulers often justify repression by suggesting the alternative is to see radical Islamists seize power, but Tunisia offers little obvious support for this argument.
"Ben Ali's regime overplayed the Islamist card, trying to scare people about al Qaeda. People saw through it," said Saad Djebbar, an Algerian lawyer and political analyst.
"And as it turned out there were few beards in the street in the protests, even though, to be fair, many Tunisian Islamists prudently don't wear beards."
Arab leaders with more wealth at their disposal also have options to deal with dissent that the Tunisian leader lacked.
"Tunisia simply had fewer cards to play. The country doesn't have the recourse to hydrocarbon rent to make all problems go away," said North Africa analyst Geoff Porter, citing moves by Libya and Algeria to reduce food prices by forgoing tax revenue.
Even resource-poor countries such as Jordan have tried to forestall unrest by taking similar measures they can ill afford.
For Beirut-based commentator Rami Khouri, the message of the Tunisian insurrection was clear.
"It marks the end of acquiescence and docility among masses of ordinary Arab citizens who had remained remarkably complacent for decades in the face of the mounting power of Western-backed Arab security states and police- and army-based ruling regimes."
He said the grievances of Tunisian protesters were shared across the Arab world, except perhaps in small rich Gulf states.
"These complaints are about rising prices and job shortages, but also about the heavy-handed and condescending manner in which ruling Arab elites treat their citizens," Khouri wrote.
(Additional reporting by William Maclean in London and Shaimaa Fayed in Cairo; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Saturday, 8 January 2011

Inside Al-Qaeda: History, Ideology and Structure

on January 6, 2011 11:52 AM

By Will Spens.
The Frontline Club’s first First Wednesday of 2011 was a stimulating discussion focused on Al-Qaeda and the complexities and mystery surrounding its history and structure. Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, the audience was invited to engage with the expert panel, resulting in fascinating insights and at times complex arguments. You can watch the video here:

As to the origins of Al-Qaeda, historian and journalist Deepak Tripathi said that ‘the scope of Al-Qaeda is an invention of the West and is in fact a number of local insurgencies’ with its history linked to the Muslim Brotherhood of the 1920s and anti West sentiment. It was ‘a legacy of the neo colonialist era’ rooted in local causes and conditions.Dr Maha Azzam, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, said ‘Al-Qaeda was a reaction to military occupation of Muslim lands’ and that its formation was born of the ‘previous failure of Islamist groups, creating a situation where there was no ceiling on militancy’. While acknowledging that poverty was a factor in radicalization, Dr Azzam remarked that a large number of recruits were not often poor themselves.
In regards to the modern structure and hierarchy of the organization, journalist Camille Tawil said that ‘Al-Qaeda became franchised all over the middle east and the world’ after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The nature of such affiliations was contentious however, along with reliable estimates for their number.
When asked whether Al-Qaeda could be defeated, Noman Benotman, a former leader of the jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), said that countering Al-Qaeda propaganda, along with ‘more freedom and democracy in the Middle East’ is essential. An understanding of the Al-Qaeda view that time, not land, is its most important asset was fundamental.
On the topic of whether Al-Qaeda would be be willing to use weapons of mass destruction if available, the panel was in agreement that this was almost certainly true.
In his closing remarks Camille Tawil touched on the revelation that there is now infact debate going on within Al-Qaeda itself and within jihadist groups. Challenging the core ideologies of Al-Qaeda in using violence against Islamic governments in the middle east.

To watch the discussion, please visit the link below:

First Wednesday: Inside Al-Qaeda

Our 2011 events get off to a flying start with a look at the inner workings of the extremist network Al-Qaeda.Paddy O'Connell of BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House will be hosting our First Wednesday discussion of the year. With an expert panel we will be examining how the operation works.
Where is it geographically strongest? What form does the organisation take and what tactics does it employ? How has it evolved and how will it evolve in the future?
To address these questions, joining us will be:Dr Maha Azzam, Associate Fellow, Chatham House.
Investigative journalist and Al-Qaeda expert Camille Tawil. Tawil has covered Islamic militant groups for Al-Hayat Arabic daily in London since the early 1990s and is the author of The Armed Islamic Movement in Algeria - from the FIS to the GIA and Brothers in Arms - the Story of al-Qaeda and the Arab jihadists.Deepak Tripathi, historian, journalist, researcher and author of Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism and Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan.Noman Benotman, a senior analyst at Quilliam. He was previously a leader of the jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and an associate of senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan. In September 2010, he published an open letter to his former colleague Osama bin Laden calling on him to abandon violence.
Join us in the New Year for a lively public meeting which will mix the views of the experts and commentators with contributions from our audience.